Kris Holloway

Kris Holloway spent two life-changing years in Mali, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. Monique and the Mango Rains is her memoir of that time, of the people she met, and the country she grew to love.

Holloway, twenty-two years old, fresh out of college and hailing from Ohio, was assigned to the village of Nampossela in southeastern Mali. Her host, the person she would shadow for two years and with whom she would develop a remarkable friendship, was the village health care worker and show more midwife Monique Dembele.

This book educated me about so many aspects of Mali - the culture, it's political climate, the economy - never once losing my attention or becoming tedious. In fact, I was hooked from the first page. I attribute this to the author's love of the country and its people. Even though her focus in this book is Monique and the villagers, it is obvious that Holloway was an exceptional person in the ease with which she adapted to life in Nampossela. She picked up the language quickly, had relatively few complaints about the lack of ammenities and physical comforts, and was in general open to the experience, embracing the beauty and simplicity of this extraordinary existence.

Above all else, Monique and the Mango Rains is a tribute to its title character. Monique was regal and intelligent, wise beyond her 24 years, with an easy-going sense of humor. She was compassionate and kind, dedicated to her work, despite its frustrations and the toll it took on her own life. Overworked and underpaid, she worked at the dilapidated village clinic with her infant son strapped to her back. The resources available to health care were scarce and educating the villagers often meant contradicting a patrilineal cultural tradition in which women were not free to control their own destiny where health and reproductive issues were concerned.

Holloway's descriptions made Mali come alive. She painted a richly hued picture of the village of Nampossela. When she described the oily chunks of mudfish that accompanied one meal, I could see and smell them. My skin crawled when a seven-inch long, jet black scorpion fell from an item of clothing she was about to put on one morning. I felt emotionally invested in this story, drawn to keep reading but not wanting it to end. I ached for her when her Peace Corps assignment came to an end and it was time to say good-bye to Monique and the villagers. While Holloway recounted holding back tears on her last day in Nampossela, mine were flowing freely.

I am so glad that Kris Holloway decided to write this memoir of her two years in Mali, and that she did it so masterfully. It touched my heart, and changed the way I see the world ... and I can't stop thinking about Monique. show less

Americans are used to thinking of themselves as self-reliant individualists, but Monique and the Mango Rains reminds us how much our individual self-sufficiency depends on an infrastructure so pervasive that we don’t notice it. It gives us a view into a world where everything depends on yourself, your family and your local community. If you don’t plant your crops at the right time, or the rains fall at an unexpected time, your child may die of malnutrition. If you are a woman who bleeds show more too heavily after the birth of a child, you die – there is no intensive care unit, no transfusion, sometimes not even latex gloves for the midwife.

Kris Holloway was thrown into this world as a Peace Corps volunteer. She introduces us to Monique, a village midwife and healthcare worker, and more importantly, makes us care about her and about her life. She is a living individual, a power in her own community who can raise the standard of living in her village. Holloway puts the emphasis on Monique, not herself. Appropriately, she gives Monique credit for improvements to her village, changes that Holloway and the Peace Corps structure could facilitate, but not impose from outside.

The book reads easily, like a novel, and it reminds us that the world’s poor people have lives as full and meaningful as our own. The focus is personal and individual, but the themes it brings up are universal: that it is only chance whether we are born into wealth or poverty, and that a small spark of generosity can lead to big changes. show less

Monique and the Mango Rains is aptly named. This memoir of Peace Corps worker, Kris Holloway, is not the story of her own adjustments in far-off, parched Mali, although it was probably as different from her rural Ohio hometown as you could get. Instead, the story concentrates on Holloways’ friendship with and observations of Monique Dembele, a twenty-four year old Malian midwife she worked with in the small West African village of Nampossela.

The book was alluring from page one. No, even show more before that. The captivating smile on the cover photograph of Monique Dembele drew me in. With only a sixth grade education and 9 months of midwifery training, Monique was the main care-giver for the sick and pregnant in her village. She also tended to her in-laws’ family and endured a marriage to a man she disliked. Monique knew of the injustices and difficulties women of Mali faced, yet she strived to help these women make the most out of life. I particularly like the image Holloway presents when she imagines her at work shortly before Monique is to die in childbirth:

“Monique, my teacher, my friend, my sister…I could picture her here, wrapped in bright blues and sparkling gold, giving this room its only splash of vibrant color. A pregnant midwife, her large feet splay for balance as she leans over a woman in labor. Two bellies nearly touch: one pushing and one waiting. Her chestnut skin glistens in the stifling heat. In steady, fluid motion, her hands beckon another soul. Her dark eyes, her warm voice, and sure smile give welcome comfort to another mother.”

Monique Dembele was an inspiration to those who knew her. She was like the “mango rains,” the brief and welcome rains which come unexpectedly in times of drought to freshen the world around them. show less

What if you lives in a country where, if you are a woman, you have a 1 in 12 chance of dying in childbirth? What if you are expected to have three, four, five children? What if a complication means being bundled on the back of a moped and being driven fast to the nearest larger village, where the nearest real medical care is?

The author of this fine book, Kris Holloway, spent 2 years with the Peace Corps living in a remote village in Mali. This story is the amazing tale of her friendship with show more Monique, a midwife who - although only 3 years her senior - was the only medical care most people in her village would ever see.

The story progresses from Kris' early moments being drawn in by Monique's personality and dedication, to an unexpected conclusion that is all too common in the world of Monique. A book I was prepared to not enjoy, I found myself drawn into it. With the plot structure a total shambles, with time jumping months in a matter of sentences with no warning, the book rather focuses in on Monique and her situation. A relatively short book at 200 pages, it successfully paints the picture of a woman who is fully aware of her situation as midwife in a sub-Saharan African village, and faces that with a striking combination of fatalistic acceptance and entrepreneurial will to change the fate of women in her village.

This story should be read by all Westerners, if only to contrast the sanitized birthing process we experience with the trials found in most of the rest of the world. show less